Christmas is not about the presents, but the Gift

Published 6:35 am, Friday, December 11, 2015

A typical Wall Christmas breakfast with tables set up in the garage. Phyllis Wall’s father John Dayton, sitting next to her mother Lorena Dayton, looks at the camera. Christmas I Remember

A typical Wall Christmas breakfast with tables set up in the garage. Phyllis Wall’s father John Dayton, sitting next to her mother Lorena Dayton, looks at the camera. Christmas I Remember

Christmas is not about the presents, but the Gift

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“Christmas won’t be Christmas without presents.”

The opening line of Louisa May Alcott’s classic “Little Women” echoes in the hearts of most of America. Everything else -- the programs, the parties, the caroling, the shopping -- are mostly a big preview of Christmas morning when the tree is lit and the children gather around to see what Santa left for them.

So, back in the mid-1960s when Phyllis Dayton, around age 9, heard her mother Lorena Dayton say that there would be no presents that year, she was understandably shocked.

And there would be no make-up gifts, no ice cream, bon-bons and flowers such as the March girls received from a benevolent neighbor in “Little Women.”

“When my mother was on a mission, she was on a mission,” said the woman who became Phyllis Wall.

Lorena Dayton’s mission led the family to Sears department store, then located where the Justice Building is now and where Wall’s father John Dayton worked in the appliance department. There the Walls met a family that was a mirror image of themselves, a boy around 16, the same age as Wall’s brother John, a girl the same age as Phyllis, a mother and a father.

The family was having a rough year financially, and the Wall family was sacrificing their own Christmas for theirs.

Wall remembers running around the clothing racks with the other little girl. She remembers the girl trying on dresses.

“It was like a party,” she said.

Afterwards, Wall recalled, the mother of the family took the gifts, wrapped them and put them under their Christmas tree.

Yes, Wall remembers, the Walls had a Christmas tree that year - but without gifts underneath.

Wall was what is now called a “latchkey kid” when she was growing up. However, she didn’t feel neglected. Instead, she said, because both of her parents had to work to provide the basic needs for their family, “They valued the lessons of sacrificial giving in a way that created an important legacy for me and my family.”

Lorena Dayton worked at The Dixie Shop, a high-end women’s clothing store on Seventh Street between Broadway and Austin.

“My mother was a servant,” Wall said. “She fitted and pinned clothing for the women all day long. She never minded serving other people.”

While the Wall family had the necessities of life, they were not wealthy. Wall remembers her mother saving leftovers from the dining table.

“If there were three peas on a plate, she would put them in a butter tub and freeze them,” Wall said.